October Results

Hey Gang,

Been super lazy with this blog but I have not forgotten about you! Just going to be a short update because I plan on blogging again at the beginning of December. Can't believe the year is almost over and I already know with all the holidays around the corner, it'll be the new year real quick.

RESULTS:



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The month went about as good as I could hope for. I started the month off super hot and sorta cooled down towards the end. I can't be complacent though because there were definitely some spots where I could improve and I know I can't just rely on running hot at 200NL and above.

That's all for now and I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Cheers,

mazzler

September Recap

Hey Gang,

September started off pretty bad and thanks to Brian, was saved at the end. Pretty much I was just burning money and Brian helped me plug some leaks and I feel like I'm gonna just crush in October.

In other news, Pokerstars has decided to stop serving residents of Washington state. Pretty shitty huh? So I'm anticipating that FTP will be doing the same soon so I will be trying to grind as much as possible as well as finding a solution to this problem.

I haven't been playing as much Starcraft lately but the games we have played, we have been doing a lot better. Couple of the guys probably got coaching or something because they have been carrying our team. Time to ride their coattails to diamond!

GRAPH:



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Again I'd like to thank Brian for helping me out! You can tell where he started sweating me and the rest is history.

GOALS:

4ptbb+ @ 100NL
Top 50 winner at 100NL

Hope you guys had a great September!

Cheers,

mazzler

August Recap/September Goals

Hey Gang,


LIFE:

First off, where the hell did summer go? I'm up in Seattle, WA and its freezing up here already. Can't even get through August and its all loom and gloom again. August from what I can remember was a pretty solid month. My gf and I have been making new friends and it has been fun to get to know new people. It all culminated with a end-of-the-year bbq last weekend. Obviously there was lots of drinking and grilling and was good times.

POKER:

August was okay IMO in regards to poker. It was up and down for me and eventually I went on a miniheater at the end of the month to grind out a small profit. I feel like I'm doing really well and knowing what to do in certain situations to be more profitable. I took a few shots at 200NL and it didn't go too great so I have decided to just concentrate on being the best 100NL reg and when I think I am one of the top 100NL regs, I will move up to 200NL.

Graphs:



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GOALS:

4ptbb @ 100NL

Only one goal for September and it is to CRUSH 100NL. I know I can play well enough to get top 10 on PTR's top winners.

Hope you guys had a great summer!

Cheers,

mazzer

July Recap

Hey Gang,

July was pretty meh on the poker front but awesome on the life front. I only got in about 50k hands at 100NL for a whopping +1200. Started the month off running terrible and it sort of evened out in the end. I blame the lack of volume with a trip to Vegas as well as my birthday at the end of the month. It definitely is really hard to get back into grinding when you take more than a few days off from the game. I just couldn't get any traction after getting back from Vegas. I feel like I won't be able to get many hands in for August either with.... the release of SC2! If anyone out there wants to play, hit me up!

Plans for August are to play at least a little bit but I already know the majority of my time will be spent on SC2. Hopefully I can grind out some profit at tables at the same time hittin diamond league in SC.

Cheers,

mazzler

Vegas!

Hey Gang,

Gonna head to Vegas in a couple hours to hang out with a big group of friends. Hopefully I'll get a chance to put in decent volume at the 2/5 and maybe 5/10 games at the V. Anyone that's in the area feel free to leave a comment so we can get in touch.

Hope everyone has been well.

Cheers,

Mazzler

Ugh.

Hey Gang,

So I started Friday completely crushing and ended the day at +730 over 5k hands. Came home around midnight to fire up the tables again it was just a disaster. -740 over only 2800 hands. I ran terrible but that included some really sick coolers (set over set, runner runner BS).

Awesome Friday Afternoon:



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Disaster Saturday Morning:



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So far I am running 6 BI below EV. It just feels really sick because when I'm not getting sucked out on, I'm just getting totally set up which just makes things that much worse. Great start to July.

/vent

mazzler

June Results/July Goals

Hey Gang,

Hope everyone has been well. Let's start off with June's goals.

75k hands at 100NL/200NL - Success
Study more through vids/sweats - Success
Become a rakeback affiliate? - Still working on this one.

June was sort of a downer at the beginning of the month but then I decided to get some coaching to get myself over the hump. For anyone that is looking for a good full ring coach, you definitely gotta look up Damn Ringer on Cardrunners. This guy is just really good at helping people plug leaks as well as giving good insight on really common spots that trip people up.

I have also been using my down time on watching FR vids on CR, mostly from Rask, and have been really helpful. If you aren't already, check out the videos on CR and it could definitely help add to your overall winrate.

The topic of becoming a rakeback affiliate is still in the works. There is just so many things that I have to learn before even considering doing this. Hopefully in a few months I can get this venture off the ground.

As I posted above, June got off to a pretty crappy start. Breaking even for the first 50k hands was just like a kick in the nuts. I'm sure everyone has experienced it so I won't go too much in detail about the ugliness. The 2nd half of the month is when I got some coaching from Damn Ringer and after a few sessions with him, I see 100NL completely different.

Overall graph for June 2010:



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Graph after getting coaching from DR:



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The major adjustments DR has helped me make was to open up my game more and attacking when the time is right. I'm still getting the hang of it but each day I feel like I am getting better. Needless to say, I hope to be at 200NL in the near future and hopefully crushing.


OVERALL:

+3100 over 97k @ 100NL, 1.58BB/100
+1350 RB

GOALS:

75k hands at 100NL
Take shots at 200NL
3BB/100

Hope everyone has been well and good luck in July!

Cheers,

Mazzler

May Results/June Goals

Hey Gang,

I hope everyone had a better May than I did. I'll just post the graph and save you the words.



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My goals from April were as follows:

75k+ hands at 100NL - Success
3BB/100 winrate - epic fail
Study more poker through sweats, hh reviews, asking questions - Borderline
Get back to the gym regularly - Fail

Even though I played a ton of hands this month, I just couldn't get things going. It seemed like I'd have one winning session and then have a losing session right after that. For my first month back thought I'll definitely take the win. I'm going to use this a motivational tool to push me to study more and do everything I can to get better.

In other news I was entertaining the idea of starting a website as a poker affiliate. I know nothing about going about this but it seems like a very profitable investment of my time. I've sent out a couple emails to people to get insight about this topic but like I said, I'm just throwing the idea out there. If anyone has any thoughts on starting up an affiliate, let me know.


OVERALL

+$1240 poker
+$1300 rakeback

GOALS

75k hands at 100NL/200NL
Study more through vids/sweats
Become a rakeback affiliate?

Hope everyone has a profitable June!

Cheers,

Mazzler

May Update

Hey gang,

May has been pretty up and down for me. Seems I can't string together a few winning sessions. I have been having one winning session and one or two losing sessions right after that. Overall I'm +14 BI at the moment but I've put in almost 75k hands. I can't complain since this is my first month back on FTP. I'm hoping to get back to 200NL either next month or the following month. I plan to take some shots at 200NL and see how I do.

In other news I wanna give a big shoutout to Damn Ringer. He will be making videos for Cardrunners and he definitely deserves it. He has helped me a ton with my game and is just an overall great guy. So again, congrats Eric!

Cheers,

Mazzler

Getting Crushed.

Past few days I have been getting destroyed at the tables. Cbets getting raised, hands not holding up, etc. I really hope this is temporary because I was doing pretty well at 100NL (20BI) before these past few days came up. I'm also thinking about getting a coach to help me progress through the games. If anyone has any thoughts let me know.

Cheers,

Mazzler

April Results/May Goals

So April was sort of a goofy month for me. I was on Playersonly (Cake Network) but the games were completely dead and I didn't feel like moving to FTP until I checked out the new software they were coming out with on the 15th. So between the 1st and 15th I would check the PO lobby to see what games were running and it would only be the 5/10 green tables. If you aren't familiar with Playersonly, it is mostly a sports betting site that has poker as well. So the green tables are only for the Playersonly skin. This equates to massive fish with big stacks that love to gamble. Normally I play 1/2 or 2/4 but with no other games running I could 1 or 2 table 5/10 comfortably.

Looking at my HEM for April, I ran ridiculously hot. ~1600 hands for +2200. Adjust EV? -1600. I was lucky to win the flips and one KK > AA AIPF. Also tallied about 1k at 3/6 over ~900 hands.

In the middle of month I took a week long vacation to Miami with my gf and a couple friends. It was nice to take some time off but I had the urge to grind. So I hopped back on FTP because the new PO skin was terrible and played a couple sessions to get my feet wet. When we got back from vacation I just had grind on the mind and put in 40k hands from Sunday-Wednesday. In the end the final tally came out to be +1800 over ~40k hands at 100NL. I continued to run hot because my adjusted EV was ~+900.

It is definitely nice to run hot but it also gives me the false sense of security at the same time. I thought I was just playing well but I was just getting really lucky. Either way I'll take it.

SUMMARY-

42k hands +5k
RB - +800

Total: $5800

GOALS-

75k+ hands at 100NL
3BB/100 winrate
Study more poker through sweats, hh reviews, asking questions
Get back to the gym regularly

Cheers,

Mazzler

Getting Started

BACKGROUND-

24y/o player from Washington State. Mostly play 200NLFR but starting back at 100NLFR.

PAST-

So I was a FTP reg for a little while a couple years ago and then switched over to Cake and it was great. Then the games started dying (obv) and I couldn't get the volume in that I wanted. Then a couple weeks ago the skin I played on (PlayersOnly) was moving to the Merge network. I was hesitant to move over but waited until I loaded up the software and my god is it bad. This led me to take my action back to FTP.

When I was a reg at 200NLFR a couple years ago, I was a super nit playin 10/8 and ran hot for a little while and grinding RB. Then I just played bad and never really learned. This is why I wanted to use this blog to help me get better by getting advice from other players and to help me go over sessions because normally I would just shut down after playing. Evaluating my game and getting better is what I want to do because who knows how much longer we can do this.

PRESENT-

So like I posted earlier, I am back on FTP playing 100NL. The reason for this is to rebuild my bankroll and to just get re-accustomed to the new environment. I took for granted what I had at Cake because the players weren't as good as they are on FTP. I don't want to make the same mistake I did two years ago by just being complacent and "beating" the game for .80bb/100. I feel like I have the tools to be a 2bb+ winner but I just have to keep working at it. It is easy for a lot of poker players to either get lazy or complacent. With the distractions of everyday life (COD, TV, etc) it can be hard to grind the volume you want. But as the old adage says, if you're not getting better, you're getting worse. I firmly believe that because the game is constantly evolving and you have to keep on your game or else it's going to pass you by.

In conclusion, I hope this blog will help motivate and succeed in being a better poker player. I am happy to talk and meet new people so feel free to email me at jmar1985@gmail.com or leave your contact info.

Cheers,

Mazzler